coal

As the Trump Administration dials back the Clean Power Plan citing pesky environmental regulations for coal's problems, its claims of being against intervention ring hollow. If the President wants modern, independent and increasingly economically sustainable power infrastructure, he should be backing solar.

Cayuga Operating Company (COC), the owner of a coal-fired plant in Tompkins County, New York, has announced plans to construct one of the state’s largest solar farms for an investment in excess of US$25 million.

At least 13.7GW of planned coal-fired power plants have been cancelled in India this month, while solar prices have tumbled to new lows, showing that India’s energy transformation is in full swing, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

Consultancy firm Bridge to India explains how southern India represents a test case for grid integration of variable renewable energy, accounting for 45% of the country’s total wind and solar power capacity.

After announcements that India will hit solar cells and modules with an 18% tax under the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, some confusion has arisen about what level the tax will actually be set at.

After new Secretary of Energy Rick Perry sent a memo to his chief of staff authoring a 60-day review of the grid to investigate how certain federal subsidies boost one form of energy at the expense of certain base load energies such as nuclear and coal, many industry observers believed him to be attacking renewable energy, but the SEIA claims this is not the case.

President Donald Trump’s executive order that promotes ‘Energy Independence’ and targets Obama’s Clean Power Plan went down a treat with fossil fuel interests, who praised Trump for making good on his promise to preserve coal jobs and avoid “regulatory burdens”. However, environmentalists took a different interpretation; viewing the order as a KO of the previous administration’s entire climate action legacy. Clean energy advocates stood somewhere in the middle, concluding that little will change in the long run.

President Trump’s long anticipated executive order advising the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw parts of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) has left clean energy advocates unabashed, despite critics viewing the order as a total wipe out of Obama’s climate action legacy.

President-elect Trump has selected several of his cabinet members already, with the common theme being a shared climate scepticism and a kindred affinity for fossil fuels. The energy industry has reacted, with some despairing and others cautiously optimistic.

Major power firm EnergyAustralia has confirmed it will soon sign power purchase agreements (PPAs) for 500MW of wind and solar projects across eastern Australia, in contracts worth AU$1.5 billion (US$1.12 billion).

Indian conglomerate Adani has released more details of its planned 1GW of solar investments in Australia over the next five years, while the Queensland Supreme Court has dismissed appeals against granting mining licenses for Adani’s planned $16.5 billion Carmichael coal project.